Young people in care must be heard
A provocation paper
Judy Sebba, Professor of Education, Rees Centre, University of Oxford
Introduction
There are approximately 75,000 children in care, about three quarters of whom are in foster care. The ‘Fostering Stocktake’[i] published in 2017 describes the care system and challenges faced by it in detail. While generally positive about fostering, the children and care leavers who Narey and Owers consulted in the Stocktake reported that their voice often goes unheard at home and at school. This provocation paper starts from the premise that those who design services should take the lead from those who are supposed to benefit from the service. Oakley[ii] noted that we should: ensure that those who intervene in other people’s lives do so with the most benefit and the least harm. This, she argued, stipulated that the best possible evidence about the benefits, costs and implementation should underlie provision of services. Implementation science relies partially on consumer views and while we have paid lip service to the views of young people for many years, their perspectives are barely reflected in the services they receive. The Office of the Children’s Commissioner[iii] recently concluded that children who rely on the care of the state often feel they have no say in the care they receive. So, what are the key messages from care-experienced young people and what are the implications for the services we provide?
Being listened to, but beyond that, acting on the messages heard
In March 2014, the Rees Centre at the University of Oxford together with Oxfordshire County Council hosted the Annual Conference of the Virtual School Headteachers (VSHs)[iv]. Eight care-experienced young people presented their experiences of schooling as a keynote at the conference attended by over 120 VSHs. The main points included listening to young people, acting on the messages heard, not relying on negative stereotypes of care-experienced young people as being inattentive, untrustworthy or unmotivated and believing in the young people by supporting them to achieve.
The everyday construction of children, in particular those in care, as immature in knowledge and understanding often negates acknowledging them as ‘experts in their own lives’ who can take an active role in decision-making.[v] Professionals are trained to listen but do not always hear the messages because their training and experience point towards a decision that might conflict with the views of the young person. When they do hear, the services are too fragmented to provide a coordinated response. For example, in 2015, we published a study that linked care and educational data[vi] showing that when all other factors are controlled (e.g. socio-economic, behaviour) moving schools in the last two years of schooling takes six grades off the GCSEs of a care-experienced pupil. The 26 young people interviewed in that study confirmed that they would rather travel daily for one hour than move school. Four years later, the fragmented children’s services in some areas are unable to respond and the professional judgements of social care colleagues sometimes override those of the VSH representing the views of the young person on whose life they are pronouncing. The young people in that study noted:
Listen a lot, a hell of a lot. Listen, because not enough people do that. …kids out there …need help, and they won’t ask because… they’re too scared of getting shut down. So, if a child is telling you they need help, you need to listen, and even if they’re not telling you, ask questions. Ask them if they need help, because a lot of kids don’t get asked that.[vii]
More recent studies continue to identify the importance of listening as a characteristic of an effective foster placement.[viii] Mannay et al.[ix] concluded from 67 interviews with young people in care that their voices need to be heard much more extensively and consistently and that we need to be more creative in the means we provide for them to express their views.
Having a significant adult that ‘looks out for you’
The young people who spoke at the conference stressed the importance of having someone who ‘looked out for you’ given they hadn’t had a family to do that. They spoke of ‘knowing that somebody somewhere cares about your hopes’. This is particularly important when many have experienced significant rejection prior to coming into care:
We first went into care because my mum didn’t want us anymore. Well, it wasn’t really that; she’d got a boyfriend, and the boyfriend said, ‘It’s me or the kids’, and obviously she chose him. She took us into school, and I remember it like it was yesterday — she took us to school with packed bags and said she wasn’t going to come and pick us up afterwards.[x]
In our educational research, when young people are asked to identify what helps them with their schooling, they identify the importance of having at least one adult in school, often not a teacher, who they can trust and will be there for them when they need support and to coordinate the efforts of other professionals. One secondary pupil in an evaluation of attachment and trauma training in schools commented:
Miss [name] was basically there for me through everything … I had to work in her room just to get back into school because I stopped coming into school completely…, so I felt more comfortable getting into the routine of school again and just becoming more confident. So, there is still some lessons that I work upstairs just so I can have her support. If I need time out I go up there and I get that time out, like she is literally like my life support in a way because she does everything, she understands me completely.[xi]
Providing immediate access to the adult trusted by the child cannot be guaranteed during a lesson. However, there is extensive evidence of the importance of this role in schools given the history many of these young people have of being let down. Similarly, our research[xii] showed the challenges that some foster carers experienced in accessing schools, limiting the influence they might have on educational progress.
Feeling safe from oneself as well as from others / being seen as ‘normal’
Young people in care make frequent reference to ‘feeling unsafe’, either in relation to other adults or with themselves:
Prison presented me with a false sense of security. When I was sent to prison I felt a sense of relief because nobody could hurt me more than I could hurt myself. Prison protected me from me.[xiii]
Unsafe feelings may reflect many underlying reasons such as lack of stability, difficulty in developing a sense of belonging and fears about the future. Listening to these fears and supporting the person to develop trust are key to making progress but research suggests that children and young people in care may sometimes experience emotional or, less often, physical abuse from those responsible for their care, reinforcing the mistrust they have developed.[xiv]
This might further contribute to their consistent determination to be seen as ‘normal’[xv] and to prefer others not to be told their care status:
…no one, barely, at school knows I’m in care, so they would never, ever, ever… I think, if they knew, it would be harder for me to just act like I weren’t. …I actually see myself as not in care… I actually see myself as normal, as the rest of my friends are, with parents, and stuff like that.[xvi]
This consistently expressed preference not to be identified as in care presents a serious challenge for services trying to provide appropriate support. Young people themselves acknowledge this challenge and need to be part of the solution for addressing it.
Emotion coaching emphasizes the importance of acknowledging the person’s emotions, getting behind the behaviour and identifying the trigger in order to help the person acknowledge, express and deal with their feelings and emotions:
I came into conflict with the law because I was hurting and did not know how to explain to people what was happening to me. I also felt like I had nobody to let down in life. I strongly believe that, through strong mentoring and skill development, I was able to grow my self-worth and become loved and cared for; through this I then developed purpose in my life.[xvii]
Contributing meaningfully to reviews of schooling
While increasing the engagement of children and young people in planning and providing services, they also need to be more involved in reviewing schooling. In the evaluation of UNICEF’s Rights Respecting Schools Programme[xviii], some schools engaged pupils meaningfully in both staff appointments and evaluating lessons. One middle school headteacher challenged me on whether children aged 8–12 years could possibly make appropriate judgements and was surprised to hear that 6–8 year olds in their primary feeder school were doing so and might expect to continue this when transitioning to his school. Evaluating lessons is surely what every child does every day, though they are rarely asked for their reflections.
Contributing meaningfully to reviews of their own progress
The progress of children in care is formally reviewed through the Personal Education Plans (PEP) process with children usually but not always, attending the meeting. One young woman we interviewed felt that she had better ways to spend her time and reported that she read the minutes afterwards and challenged anything with which she was concerned or disagreed[xix]. Ensuring children and young people are given the opportunity to input meaningfully into reviewing their progress seems fundamental to ensuring appropriate support is offered.
Implications for future policy
One of the VSHs at the conference in 2014 commented that the keynote by the young people provided an appropriate reminder of who it is we actually work for. In this paper I have suggested that we fail children and young people in care by designing and delivering services for them, not with them. This requires changes in attitudes as well as processes because it challenges professionals to see young people as ‘experts’ on their own lives, while assessing the risks in doing so with this vulnerable population.
Foster carers, social workers, teachers and others working with young people as partners in the design and delivery of educational services increase the chances that their needs will be met. It provides an opportunity to acknowledge the trauma or neglect that they have experienced prior to entering care. It also enables them to take the lead in identifying their significant adult(s), ensuring that they feel and indeed are safe, restricting knowledge of their care status and identifying how they will review their progress and communicate this to service providers. Mannay et al. invite us to increase the volume of the voices of care-experienced children and young people and to develop ways of making these voices heard in informing and improving the services they receive. However, the final word in this paper must go to a care leaver who acknowledges that with the right support her own capacity needs to be realised:
Many young people, myself included, have the ability to “bounce back” and show extreme resilience in difficult circumstances; however, support from others is crucial to ensuring that young people are able to identify that resilience within themselves.[xx]
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[ii] Oakley, A. (2000) Experiments in Knowing, New York: New Press, p.3.
[iv] A Virtual School is not a physical school, but a team mainly of teachers in a local authority (LA) who work predominantly through the schools and other services to improve the education of children in care.
[v] Mannay, D., Staples, E., Hallett, S., Roberts, L., Rees, A., Evans, R. & Andrews, D. (2019) Enabling talk and reframing messages: working creatively with care experienced children and young people to recount and re-represent their everyday experiences, Child Care in Practice, 25(1), 51–63.
[vi] Sebba, J., Berridge, D., Luke, N., Fletcher, J., Bell, K., Strand, S., Thomas, S., Sinclair, I. and O’Higgins, A. (2015) The Educational Progress of Looked After Children in England: Linking care and educational data. Oxford, Bristol and London: The Rees Centre, The University of Bristol and The Nuffield Foundation.
[vii] Berridge, D., Bell, K., Sebba, J., & Luke, N. (2015) The educational progress of looked after children in England. Technical report 3: Perspectives of young people, social workers, carers and teachers. Oxford/Bristol: Rees Centre/University of Bristol.
[viii] Neagu, M. & Sebba, J. (2019) Who do they think they are: Making sense of self in residential care, foster care, and adoption, Children and Youth Services Review, 105, 104449.
[ix] Mannay et al. op. cit.
[x] Berridge et al. op. cit.
[xi] Sebba, J. & Dingwall, N. (2017) Evaluation of the Attachment Aware Schools’ Programme in Bath and NE Somerset. Oxford: The Rees Centre.
[xii] Sebba et al. op. cit.
[xiii] Thomas I. (2019) Custody and fostering teenager, Child & Family Social Work, 24, 407–408.
[xiv] Neagu & Sebba op. cit.
[xv] Neagu & Sebba ibid.; Sebba et al. op. cit.
[xvi] Berridge et al. op. cit.
[xvii] Thomas I. op. cit.
[xviii] Sebba, J. & Robinson, C. (2010) Evaluation of UNICEF UK’s rights respecting schools award (RRSA). London: UNICEF UK.
[xix] Berridge et al. op. cit.
[xx] Ward, J. (2019) Commentary on the two linked papers “A comparison of state support” and “Supporting young people from care to adulthood”, Child & Family Social Work, 24, 406.
